`America First`: Political Swear Words Or Just A Desire For An Even Break?

COMMENTARY

December 22, 1991|By JAMES G. DRISCOLL, Editorial Writer

This nation`s newest swear words swiftly thrust themselves into the political vocabulary: America First, and nativist. To damn with those cuss words requires merely a turn to the right, then a blast at Pat Buchanan in the near mist and David Duke in the far fog.

The devil, you say. Yes they are, both of them, and dangerous disrupters to boot. Duke`s blatant bigotry is buffed by Buchanan to a blinding gloss, but although they may not be identical ideological twins, they are fraternal.

Duke`s the one who polished his image with plastic surgery, while Buchanan tried to honey-coat his poisonous gibes, weeks after uttering them. So far, both have failed to attract reasonable Americans, of which there are more than a few left. A protracted recession, however, replaces sweet reason with deep resentment among the millions of the jobless or soon to be, and no one should count out the fraternal twins who feed greedily on frustration.

There`s a problem with the shotgun attack on Duke and Buchanan. Innocents, non-bigots all, are being struck by the wide-ranging pellets, and I dare say it`s deliberate. The firing squad from the Bush camp is trying to shoot down, as a supposed America Firster, anyone who insists the president examine a map of the world, find the United States and deal with its problems.

This is not just an intra-party tiff among Republicans. It is a battle for even-handedness in the White House, a demand that Bush tend to needs at home without abandoning an international role for the United States.

Definitions, conventional and otherwise, are required for clarity. The America First Committee was founded in 1940 to keep the United States out of World War II, and was dissolved four days after Pearl Harbor. Not all of its 800,000 members were tolerant human beings, and the phrase America First still resonates with narrow isolationism and to Hades with everyone beyond our borders.

Nativism favors a native culture and its inhabitants against immigrants and their suspicious foreign ways. When Buchanan dips his speech-writer`s pen in hemlock and asks how long it would take for a million immigrant Zulus to adapt to the culture of Virginia, that is nativism, most foul.

The White House barrage thunders on, and those who think Bush should consider America Once in a While, or should move America Off the Back Burner, are stung by the pellets. When they say America First, they mean something entirely different.

For Bush as president, it has been America Last. Every other nation was considered ahead of his own, by him, and the American people have caught on. Too slowly, but now they know, and some are furious enough to be receptive to the fraternal twins.

Most, though, simply want the president -- or his successor chosen next fall -- to give America equal billing. They are not isolationists. They are not nativists in the ugly sense. They are not closet bigots trying to keep everyone out of this country. They are fair-minded Americans, tired of being forgotten.

Abroad, Bush is a star. He twinkles. His eyes glitter. He is feted as the symbol of fearsome military power, if not of the New World Order, which has been largely abandoned as more gimmick than reality.

At home, Bush seems a dullard. No twinkle, no glitter. Just the endless recession, the pained cries for health care, the veto wielded as policy, the plummeting ratings in the polls.

Most presidents eventually opt to seek adulation abroad, while half-heartedly trying to hold their own at home. Bush decided to head overseas earlier than most, on Day One in the Oval Office.

At last, the troubles at home have tugged at his sleeve, kicked him in the shins and gotten his attention. Reluctantly, to survive at the polls next November, Bush is homeward bound.

It`s slogging time, trudging through the muck and quicksand of domestic policy. Bush abhors the drudgery, but it comes with the job.

If blueblood Bush can recall the concept of fair play, as practiced on the fields of Yale and not as annihilated by the savage use of Willie Horton in the 1988 campaign, he could direct the White House firing squad to be careful. Shoot at Duke and Buchanan, not at fair-minded Americans seeking an even break.